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\n US inflation cooled off at the wholesale level as businesses\u2019 margins took a big hit in August, new data showed Wednesday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Producer prices unexpectedly fell 0.1% in August, cooling annual inflation to 2.6% from a downwardly revised 3.1% in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.\n <\/p>\n
\n Helping to drive prices lower was a 1.7% drop in trade services, a category reflective of producers, wholesalers and retailers\u2019 profit margins. If margins are shrinking, it could be an indication that businesses are using those to eat higher costs, economists have said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The trade services category can be highly volatile; however, August\u2019s drop is the biggest monthly decline there in more than a year.\n <\/p>\n
\n When excluding highly volatile components like trade services, as well as food and energy, the underlying inflation trend appears less rosy: Prices rose 0.3% from July and ticked up to 2.8% for the 12 months ended in August.\n <\/p>\n
\n Still, Wednesday\u2019s report painted a picture of inflation not drastically escalating at the wholesale level, a dynamic that bolstered investors\u2019 expectations that the Federal Reserve will follow through cutting interest rates later this month.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe tariff effect is not boosting across-the-board price pressures yet,\u201d Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds, wrote Wednesday in a note. \u201cEconomists will still caution markets that core producer goods prices are rising significantly at the producer level, so the country is not out of the woods from the inflation threat.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut the warnings are falling on deaf ears as far as investors are concerned. As time goes on one has to wonder if there are slow-growth reasons and weak economic demand that is keeping inflation in check,\u201d he added.\n <\/p>\n
\n Stock futures moved higher after the data release. Dow futures were up 30 points, paring earlier losses. S&P 500 futures rose 0.54% and Nasdaq 100 futures gained 0.57%. Two-year Treasury yields fell.\n <\/p>\n
\n Economists were expecting that the overall PPI, which measures the change in prices received by producers of goods and services, would increase by 0.4% on a monthly basis and hold unchanged at the previously estimated 3.3% from a year ago.\n <\/p>\n
\n PPI serves as a potential bellwether for the prices consumers may see at businesses in the months ahead.\n <\/p>\n
\n This story is developing and will be updated.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link US inflation cooled off at the wholesale level as businesses\u2019 margins took a big…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":215598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,79,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-215597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115180260873797095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}